Opinion | Sabarimala: The Problem With Imposed Reform

Lasting change in matters of faith is unlikely to come through coercion. It has to emerge from within the tradition itself.

Last week, the Supreme Court indicated that the Constitution Bench’s verdict on the entry of young women into the Sabarimala temple is likely to be delivered in October this year.

In its 2018 verdict, the Supreme Court had allowed women of menstruating age to enter the temple. The judgment was difficult for many devotees to accept, even as the then LDF government in Kerala sought to enforce it. The episode proved politically disastrous for the government, which had earlier submitted an affidavit supporting the entry of young women. The ruling alliance was subsequently forced to change its stand.

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The review petitions filed against the judgment widened the scope of the dispute, bringing into consideration larger constitutional questions concerning religious practices and, potentially, other faiths as well. It is the Constitution Bench’s final verdict on these review petitions that is now expected in October.

The restriction on women’s entry had earlier sparked a huge debate, not just in Kerala, but across India and beyond. Some sought to portray it as a manifestation of Hinduism’s misogyny or the ostracisation of women. Restrictions on women have existed in almost all major religious traditions, yet the Sabarimala controversy was often presented as though such restrictions were uniquely characteristic of Hinduism, and therefore evidence of its supposed primitiveness.

Mosques, for instance, have traditionally been male-dominated spaces in many Muslim societies, while women have historically been excluded from preaching, teaching men and exercising ecclesiastical authority in many Christian traditions. By contrast, comparable restrictions on women’s participation in religious life are difficult to locate within Hinduism as a whole.

What was particularly striking, however, was the response to the women who opposed the 2018 Supreme Court judgment. Many of the same voices that enthusiastically discuss concepts such as “Islamic feminism" mocked, ridiculed and vilified women devotees who opposed the verdict and protested against the Kerala government’s attempts to enforce it.

Their opposition was rarely treated as an expression of religious conviction or agency. Instead, it was often presented as evidence of their own oppression.

International media coverage was not immune to this framing. From the BBC and The Guardian to CNN and Al Jazeera, much of the coverage treated the Supreme Court judgment as an unambiguous triumph of gender equality, while portraying the religious tradition behind the restriction as archaic or primitive.

The possibility that women themselves might sincerely defend a religious practice, and that their opposition to the judgment might deserve to be understood rather than dismissed, received considerably less attention.

So why did a local ritual at a temple generate such a huge debate? Believers, that is, those who believe in the Lord of Sabarimala, would take a firm position that young women should not enter the temple. Those outside that community of believers........

© News18